for the year 1883. xxiii 



astronomer, Dr. Huggins. Although the beautiful appear- 

 ance known as the corona, which springs into visibility 

 during the moments of a total eclipse, has been secured on 

 photographs over and over again, astronomers have scarcely 

 entertained the hope of seeing, much less photographing, it 

 without an eclipse. Nevertheless, Dr. Huggins announced 

 to the Royal Society on the 21st of December last year that 

 he had obtained photographs of the clear sun, showing the 

 corona faintly but distinctly. He had found that photo- 

 graphs of the spectrum of the corona obtained in Egypt 

 during the total eclipse of May, 1882, indicated a strong 

 predominance of light in the most refrangible or blue end of 

 the spectrum. It therefore occurred to him that it might be 

 possible to get a photographic impression of the corona if all 

 other rays but those of which it appeared to be chiefly com- 

 posed were excluded. After numerous experiments in sifting 

 the sun's rays, so to speak, from all but the intrinsic light of 

 the corona, he finally succeeded in finding a medium which 

 had the power of absorbing nearly all the rays which 

 belonged to the light of the sky and illumination of our atmo- 

 sphere, and transmitting those of high refrangibility emana- 

 ting from the corona. This being done, the rest was a question 

 of delicate photography; and unmistakable photographs of 

 that phenomenon were obtained in clear sunshine, an achieve- 

 ment which opens up a wide range of new possibilities. 



I know of no science which has been so rapidly and prac- 

 tically applied to general use as electricity, especially as 

 regards telegraphy, telephony, electro-metallurgy, and 

 electric lighting. In a lecture given in February last by 

 Mr. Preece, F.R.S., at the Institute of Civil Engineers in 

 London, he sums up the recent progress of telegraphy. He 

 states that there are 80,000 miles of submarine cables at 

 work, and £30,000,000 has been embarked in them. In the 

 United Kingdom there were in 1869, 8678 miles of wire in 

 use; in 1883 this had increased to 69,000 miles, and the 

 number of messages sent on them average 603,000 per week. 

 The Morse instrument is now almost generally used, and 



